Tables have historically been utilized to arrange data in a suitable manner for review or computer processing. For example, spreadsheet applications have been developed to arrange and process data in tabular form. Additionally, many current word processing applications have table functionality associated therewith such that a user can display data in a certain format through utilization of one or more tables. Additionally, many databases can be thought of as tables, wherein entries in a database are arranged by certain indices.
In some instances, a user of one of these applications may wish to generate a new table from an existing table, wherein the new table includes some of the same data that is in the existing table (or data that can be derived from such data), but is arranged in a different format. There are substantially an infinite number of formats in which data can be displayed in a table and, depending upon a current task of a user, the user may wish to alter the format to transform the existing table into the new table such that the new table corresponds to a format that is desired by the user.
Currently, it is relatively difficult for an individual to perform format modifications on tables, particularly on tables that include a relatively large amount of data. Some conventional spreadsheet applications provide support for user-generation and implementation of one or more algorithms that can execute over an input table to create an output table. Most computer users, however, are not skilled in computer programming, and most users find spreadsheet application supported languages for generation of computer-executable programs to be non-intuitive. Thus, oftentimes a user will take a relatively long amount of time to manually recreate or reorganize data in an existing table to generate a new table in a format that is desired by the user. Manual creation of a new table from an existing table can allow for the user to make various mistakes when transferring data between tables. Also, the task of manually creating a new table from an existing table can be relatively menial, oftentimes boring for the user. Alternatively, a novice computer user can hire an expert programmer to generate a program or a script that can create a new table from an existing table with the format desired by the user, but hiring such programmer can be expensive.